As you read this column, in Switzerland our older son, Michael ’03, and his wife, Carolyn, are enjoying their special March Madness — the birth of our grand-daughter who, for now, we refer to as our Swiss Miss. Shouldshe someday choose to apply to Carolina and then also beresiding outside North Carolina, we’ll comfort her by sharingthat because “she picked her parents carefully,”her chances for admission are enhanced.

Being a legacy matters at Carolina — particularly for out-of-state applicants. The accompanying statistics are from the profile of this year’s
freshman class; you’ll find more on pages 28
through 39 of this issue, in our annual report on
admissions.

What you cannot tell from this chart is that the
92 students who enrolled from out of state com-peted with other alumni children for a limitednumber of spots reserved for out-of-state alumni children. For manyyears, the UNC System’s Board ofGovernors has mandated that systemcampuses not have more than 18percent of the entering first-yearstudents from out of state. In addi-tion to the 694 entering first-yearalumni children, there are 91 stu-dents who are children of alumniand who transferred into UNC’s

North CarolinaNon-alumniAlumniTotalOut of StateNon-alumniAlumniTotal

College of Arts and Sciences.

The world continues to envyour country’s colleges and universities, and among the manyreasons our higher education institutions are so revered is thediversity among our campuses. The presence of alumni childrenhelps preserve the culture and traditions of the nation’s oldestpublic university. As a recent editorial in The Daily Tar Heelasserted: “UNC has an obligation to maintain the tangible andintangible benefits of a Chapel Hill family. Fostering intergener-ational ties instills a deep and beneficial commitment to theUniversity.”Carolina, however, cannot and should not admit all alumnichildren who apply. Alumni parents often volunteer that theirchild worked harder, achieved more, scored higher on the SATor ACT, and they profess surprise and disappointment whenthey learn that their daughter or son hasn’t been admitted. (Ofcourse, many of us have to accept that were we applying today,we would not be admitted.)

In the past 30 years, the number of students applying hasmore than doubled — to more than 23,000 — while the sizeof the first-year class has increased by only 25 percent. Thisgreater competition for admission, coupled with the dramaticincrease in research funding and rising standing in many sur-veys, means that a Carolina diploma continues to becomemore valuable.

Applied
8,186
1,283
9,469

Applied

13,292
510

13,802

Admitted
3,914

821
4,735

Admitted
2,606

218
2,824

Admit %
47.8%
64.0%
50.0%

Admit %
19.6%
42.7%
20.5%

Enrolled
2,551

602
3,153

Enrolled
715

92807

Yield
65.2%
73.3%
66.6%

Yield
27.4%
42.2%
28.6%

to benefit us. (I also volunteer that one of my younger brothers and a nephew were not admitted as first-year students but
later transferred to Carolina. And that brother also earned a
master’s degree from UNC.)

Should our Swiss Miss one day decide that she wishes to
attend Carolina, she’ll have many family members who’ll be
thrilled. Hopefully, over the intervening years, we’ll help her
understand that there are many wonderful colleges and universities that might be a good fit for her and that we’ll be proud
and supportive of her, regardless of where she should choose
to attend. Meanwhile, our Swiss Miss will receive just as much
Carolina blue as she does Carolina pink and learn that her
ABC’s begin with UNC.